{"id":2543,"date":"2013-11-06T08:07:35","date_gmt":"2013-11-06T08:07:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.longkeshinsideout.co.uk\/?p=2543"},"modified":"2013-11-06T08:07:35","modified_gmt":"2013-11-06T08:07:35","slug":"wilfred-owen-dulce-et-decorum-est","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.longkeshinsideout.co.uk\/?p=2543","title":{"rendered":"WILFRED OWEN: DULCE ET DECORUM EST"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Wilfred Edward Salter Owen, 1893 – 1918<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

Born Oswestry, Shropshire. Educated at Birkenhead Institute and Shrewsbury Technical College.<\/strong> <\/span><\/p>\n

From the age of nineteen Owen wanted to be a poet and immersed himself in poetry, being especially impressed by Keats and Shelley. He wrote almost no poetry of importance until he saw action in France in 1917.<\/span><\/p>\n

He was deeply attached to his mother to whom most of his 664 letters are addressed. (She saved every one.) He was a committed Christian and became lay assistant to the vicar of Dunsden near Reading 1911-1913 \u2013 teaching Bible classes and leading prayer meetings \u2013 as well as visiting parishioners and helping in other ways. <\/span><\/p>\n

From 1913 to 1915 he worked as a language tutor in France. <\/span><\/p>\n

He felt pressured by the propaganda to become a soldier and volunteered on 21st October 1915. He spent the last day of 1916 in a tent in France joining the Second Manchesters. He was full of boyish high spirits at being a soldier. <\/span><\/p>\n

Within a week he had been transported to the front line in a cattle wagon and was “sleeping” 70 or 80 yards from a heavy gun which fired every minute or so. He was soon wading miles along trenches two feet deep in water. Within a few days he was experiencing gas attacks and was horrified by the stench of the rotting dead; his sentry was blinded, his company then slept out in deep snow and intense frost till the end of January. That month was a profound shock for him: he now understood the meaning of war. “The people of England needn’t hope. They must agitate,” he wrote home. (See his poems <\/span>The Sentry<\/strong><\/span> and <\/span>Exposure<\/strong><\/span>.) <\/span><\/p>\n

He escaped bullets until the last week of the war, but he saw a good deal of front-line action: he was blown up, concussed and suffered shell-shock. At Craiglockhart, the psychiatric hospital in Edinburgh, he met Siegfried Sassoon who inspired him to develop his war poetry.<\/span><\/p>\n

He was sent back to the trenches in September, 1918 and in October won the Military Cross by seizing a German machine-gun and using it to kill a number of Germans. <\/span><\/p>\n

On 4th November he was shot and killed near the village of Ors. The news of his death reached his parents home as the Armistice bells were ringing on 11 November. <\/span><\/p>\n

DULCE ET DECORUM EST<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, <\/strong>
\nTill on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant restbegan to trudge. <\/strong>
\nMen marched asleep. Many had lost their boots But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots <\/strong>
\nOf tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind. <\/strong>
\nGas! Gas! Quick, boys! \u2013 An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling, And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime . . . <\/strong>
\nDim, through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. <\/strong>
\nIn all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering,choking, drowning. <\/strong>
\nIf in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin; <\/strong>
\nIf you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud <\/strong>
\nOf vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, My friend, you would not tell with such high zest\u00a0 <\/strong>
\nTo children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie; <\/strong>
\nDulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Wilfred Owen 8 October 1917 – March, 1918<\/strong><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

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